The Japanese underworld loves gold — it has been the analog bitcoin of crime syndicates in recent years. The origins of gold are difficult to trace, and the material is easy to convert into cash and store. Crime syndicates are increasingly smuggling it, stealing ...
The head of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gangster group was served a fresh arrest warrant Friday in connection with a scuffle at the office of a different yakuza group in Kyoto in January. Kunio Inoue, 68, heads the breakaway group of yakuza formed in 2015 by ...
Last month, three masked robbers grabbed a suitcase stuffed with cash from a businessman who had just withdrawn the money from a bank in Fukuoka. The businessman is believed to have been planning to use the ¥380 million ($3.5 million) to buy gold. In December, ...
A Fuji Television Network Inc. reporter who allegedly purchased a luxury car on behalf of a man connected to the underworld is also suspected of lending millions of yen to the mobster, police officials said. The 32-year-old male employee, who was relieved of his reporter's ...
Police raided a public hospital in the city of Kyoto Tuesday in relation to the alleged helping of a senior member of a crime syndicate stay out of prison by the forging of a certificate of illness. A doctor at the Kyoto Prefectural University of ...
The Tokyo District Court on Friday sentenced a former member of a Japanese crime syndicate to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, for taking bets on baseball games involving former Yomiuri Giants players. Yoshimasa Sakai, a 37-year-old former member of an affiliate of ...
The Yamaguchi-gumi underworld group distributed candy and other snacks to children as Halloween gifts near its headquarters in Nada Ward, Kobe, according to the Kobe Shimbun. The regional newspaper quoted investigative sources as saying that members of the nation's biggest crime syndicate handed out bags ...
More than a year has passed since the country's largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, split into two. More than a dozen gangs defected from the Yamaguchi-gumi on Aug. 27, 2015, to form the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, headed by Kunio Inoue, as a rival syndicate and, ...
The Okayama Prefectural Police have arrested a member of a crime syndicate in connection with the recent fatal shooting of Tadashi Takagi, a senior member of the Ikeda-gumi faction of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi. Hideyuki Yamamoto, 32, a member of the Kodo-kai, one of the top ...
Police in the city of Okayama were on alert Wednesday after the deadly shooting of a senior member of a branch of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate. Okayama Prefectural Police said Tadashi Takagi, 55, of the gang's Ikeda-gumi faction, was found dead at 9:50 a.m. ...
When the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi broke up in August last year, many expected a turf war to erupt as the country's largest crime syndicate battled for territorial control against a newly formed group called the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi that was founded by expelled gangsters in the ...
Amid intensifying violence between rival yakuza factions, the National Policy Agency plans to label a new splinter faction a crime syndicate. It will add the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi to a list of designated crime syndicates and thereby put the group under tighter control. There are already ...
